programs

Enerlife has developed and manages energy conservation programs for a wide variety of organizations, spanning multiple building sectors: municipal, commercial, institutional, multi-unit residential, social housing, and retail. Some of the organizations we work with include Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (Greening Health Care, Mayors’ Megawatt Challenge and Sustainable Schools – all programs of TRCA’s The Living City Initiative), Canada Green Building Council (national pilot projects), and City of Toronto’s Tower Renewal Office.

Greening Health Care

Enerlife provides technical direction for Greening Health Care, a collaborative program for hospitals launched in 2003. Hospitals work together to lower their energy costs, raise their environmental performance and contribute to the health and well-being of their communities. Members manage data, assess their performance and track savings using a powerful online system developed by Enerlife. We develop and deliver workshops and webinars at which members share knowledge and best practices to help them plan, implement and verify improvements.

Mayors' Megawatt Challenge

The Mayors’ Megawatt Challenge program has been bringing together leading municipalities since 2003. Enerlife has helped found and provides technical direction for this program, in which members work to achieve exceptional levels of energy and environmental performance in municipal facilities. Participating municipalities benefit from benchmarking against comparable facilities across the sector, using the online system developed by Enerlife. They identify their savings potential and monitor improvements over time, have access to peer and industry expert networks through webinars and events, share tools and best practices, and achieve recognition for initiatives and energy performance improvements. In 2011, MMC introduced the Town Hall Challenge, which engaged cities and towns from eight provinces in identifying and recognizing some of the most energy efficient city and town halls in Canada.

Sustainable Schools

Since 2008, Toronto & Region Conservation’s Sustainable Schools program has been researching and reporting on the energy efficiency and conservation potential in Ontario’s schools. Enerlife is responsible for technical direction of this initiative, using our performance-based conservation methodology to establish rational, site-specific energy targets for individual schools.

Top Energy Performing School Boards reports are released annually as part of the program. The reports rank the overall energy efficiency and savings potential of Ontario school boards, based on individual analysis of their schools and administration buildings. The data used in this analysis is part of the Energy use and greenhouse gas emissions for the Broader Public Sector dataset. The resulting knowledge helps school boards to maximize their energy, utility cost and emissions savings in their facilities. It is also intended for use by local distribution companies and gas utilities across Ontario to help meet their own conservation targets.

Canada Green Building Council

CaGBC engaged Enerlife to conduct national pilot projects in the following building sectors: commercial office, government and utility administration, K-12 schools, retail bank branches, universities and municipal arenas. The pilots proceeded in parallel with and informed the technical development of the Canadian LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance rating system. Enerlife’s energy benchmarking and target-setting methodology introduced through the pilots has been adopted by the market, as evidenced by the REALpac Energy Benchmarking program, the reporting of energy intensity distribution of BOMA BESt certified buildings, Greening Greater Toronto’s Race to Reduce awards, and others.

Tower Renewal

The City of Toronto’s Tower Renewal program encompasses several project areas, one of which focuses on sustainable energy, water and waste practices in Toronto’s concrete apartment towers. A program was developed by Tower Renewal Office to allow property managers to improve their efficiency levels with an incremental approach starting with preparing and planning and then increasing to leadership status. Enerlife and Tower Renewal work together to help building managers in the preparation stages through analyzing and reporting on the actual energy, water and waste use when benchmarked against other apartment buildings.